The big 4-0

So my sister and I had to get together to celebrate our second 20th birthdays this year.  We love living a short drive from each other, which allows us to spend the day together and sometimes even longer.  

Well, as I alluded to in my last post, we opted to combine our birthday/Mother's Day celebration with one of Caleb's tennis tournaments.  On the Friday before our birthday, we arrived into town in the afternoon, just late enough to miss an opportunity to swim at our hotel before heading out for the evening's festivites.  Instead we grabbed a few quick treats from Starbucks to nibble on back at the room.

 Then Patrick and I took Deb and her crew, along with ours, to the Cirque Du Soleil show La Nuba.

The show was fantastic, such a display of creativity and strength.  I certainly felt my age when I left. lol  Anyway, after the show we went to a Cuban restaurant for dinner.  Delicious!  We stayed at a hotel off Disney property, the Marriott World Center, which had this great view of Epcot in the evening.

On Saturday, our actual birthday, Patrick took Caleb to his tennis tournament (at the facility down the street from my sister and Andy's house). But my sister and her crew headed to the hotel to hang out with us by the pool all day.  Once Caleb finished up his matches, he came back to join us. I picked this hotel because of the three big pool slides, along with a splash zone.  And boy, were they perfect! Even the splash zone had a slide so Havi and Josh didn't get left out.  We had such a fantastic day lounging by the pool...so relaxing and fun.  I actually forgot to bring my camera down to the pool.  So I only have a few iPhone photos from our time swimming that I still haven't uploaded yet.

Anyway, because we spent so long at the pool, we went to dinner that night in the hotel at a casual Italian spot.  Havi promptly fell asleep as soon as we sat down.  Poor girl slept across two chairs but was so zonked she didn't even budge.  After dinner, we asked Andy to snap a photo of the birthday girls in front of the eatery.  He was standing in such funny "photographer" positions, I had a hard time keeping a straight face.

After dinner, we went back up to the room where we proceeded to sing Happy Birthday to the Twinsies and eat cake.

Having spent all day every day at the women's pro circuit tournament the week before our birthday meant I had zero time to bake us our birthday cake.  Boo.  But Patrick graciously picked up a cake for us at Publix, and my sister brought along the candles.  So we had something to eat and blow out.  Anyway,  I will have to make it up to me/us soon.   

On Sunday, we checked out of our hotel and headed back to the tennis tournament for Caleb's semi-final match.  Although he didn't win, he played so great.  And my sister and her kids actually got up extra early to come watch him play his 8am match.  Yep.  8am on a Sunday.  That's love.

So that about catches us up to speed here.  Caleb will be playing in another tennis tournament this weekend (no surprise there).  But since it's a long one, Patrick wants to go surf fishing one day...like really, REALLY early in the morning.  We'll see if that plan comes to fruition.

His Birthday Eve

I mentioned in a previous post that Bammy was down from Connecticut to help Caleb celebrate his birthday.  Well, since she's down for a little while, we thought we'd put her up in some pretty nifty accommodations- our dear Peggy.  We set her up at a campground at a local park in town, about 15 minutes from the house.  On Caleb's Birthday Eve, we headed over to Bammy's place to help her get settled in and have some dinner and s'mores.  Caleb wanted to light the charcoal.

Then Baba had to head back to the house for a few things we forgot  (of course).  So in the meantime, the dumplings played with Bammy.  Caleb might have also pretended to be Santa Claus.

The meat head that I am brought my Nikon but left all my CF cards at home.  Duh!  But thankfully I had my Fujifilm in my bag and made do.

Havi may or may not have had a thing for the s'more sticks.

Eventually Baba made it back to the site as the sun went down.  We managed to eat by candle light, which was cool.  Then, although I don't think they're actually allowed in the campground, the dumplings played with some sparklers.  I guess you could call us rebels.

I wished I hadn't forgotten my CF card for my Nikon because it does so much better in low light that also has a lot of movement.  My Fujifilm is just slower in the dark, and my subjects have a hard time being still.  Not necessarily the best combination. lol Anyway, I'm glad I was able to capture the moment the only way I could.  Perspective. ;)

We had a lot of fun that night.  Good thing we just might be joining Bammy later in the week.

Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party

Happy New Year's Eve!!!

As I scroll through the photos I have taken in the month of December, I can't believe it.  I went from hardly picking up my camera in November to shooting "overdrive".  I still have so many photos I want to share.  So I will be on a posting frenzy.  As is usually the case, I will be late with my "Year in Review" post.  I will probably get that up in the next week. For now, though, I want to back up to the weekend before Christmas.

Since it had been a few years since we attended Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party, we thought we would make time for it this year.  We arrived around 4:30 because we prefer to keep our visits short (it helps us keep our sanity as the evening progresses.)  We usually go to Tomorrow Land first. So we made our way to the People Mover.

Havi is in this phase where she is afraid of the pitch dark.  So she needed some cuddling during parts of the ride.  Next up was the Raceway.  Caleb was so thrilled to be tall enough to "ride alone".  He had been looking forward to that solo drive for....ever.

The sun was setting as we were in line and on the track. So I couldn't really capture any decent photos.  But since there was a bit of a back up, I thought I would try to snap a photo of me with my precious shotgun rider.

Then we decided to grab dinner before the dinner crowd had the same idea.  After filling up, we headed over to Carousel of Progress...only to find out we were 5 minutes too late, as the ride had just closed for the evening.  Boo! The dumplings were singing the theme song all week long. So they were a bit disappointed we just missed it.  We decided to head over to Fantasy Land to ride the Barnstormer.

We were so thrilled that the wait time said 5 minutes.  Madeline and I ran all the way to the top and walked right on the roller coaster.  No waiting!!!  We had so much fun, we ran all the way down as we exited the ride so we could do it again!  This time, we had to wait once just so we could ride in the front row.  It was worth it!  The front row was a blast!  Good call Madeline!

Then we scooted on over to Ariel's Grotto.  Poor little Havi was upset with the dark.  But she managed to settle down a bit and enjoy the ride some.  Then I rode the carousel with both Caleb and Madeline.  

After the carousel, we grabbed some hot chocolate and sugar cookies.  Then we thought we'd head over to Pirates of the Carribean before the parade....only it, too, was also closed for the evening.  Poor Caleb was looking forward to it.  What a bummer.  Well, we decided to wait for the parade, and we're glad we did.  Havi insisted we go "home now".  Being at Disney in the dark was just too much for her.  At the start of the parade, she didn't even watch.  She just played with my phone.  Then Patrick held her, and she actually began to enjoy it.  We were so thankful for the turn around.

We headed home once the parade was over, and all three dumplings promptly fell asleep once we began driving.  It was a fun night and cold enough toward the end of the evening to enjoy hot chocolate, which hasn't been the case much of December.

So now that I'm caught up with sharing all that happened before Christmas, I will have to share our post-Christmas Christmas celebrations...yes, you read that right...plural.  We partied for three more days, in fact! lol  Stay tuned...

{Forgotten} Halloween Fun!

I tell ya, it's crazy that with Thanksgiving on the brain, I realized I completely forgot to share the dumplings Halloween fun.  So while everyone is chowing down on turkey and all the fixings, I'm backing up to the last holiday.  I wouldn't be so insistent on sharing these (old) photos if it weren't for the handmade costumes that were worn.  Although Havi had two adorable costumes to chose from- Minnie Mouse or Snow White, she chose to wear a petticoat.  Oh well, that's better than last year when she refused to wear a costume at all.

 Although Madeline was Sleeping Beauty at our church's trunk-or-treat, she opted to wear the flamenco dancer costume I made her two years ago.  I made it as long as I possibly could.  So thankfully, the length still worked, two years later.

 Caleb took me up on my suggestion that he be a tennis ball.  And since I waited until the week before Halloween to begin making his costume, I couldn't use a pattern.  Instead I found a tutorial online for making a ball shaped costume for a toddler and then made adjustments to all the pattern pieces to fit Caleb specifically.  It's constructed completely of felt and stuffed with fiber fill.

 Caleb has taken to posing while resting his arm on Havi's head.  The cutest!  Anyway, the dumplings did a little bit of trick-or-treating before the sun completely set.  (In the photo below, you can see the back of Caleb's tennis ball costume.)

The kids all had so much fun going door-to-door for all that junk, which I'm happy to say they consumed at a leisurely pace and have now lost interest in all that remains (which was most of it!)

Well, this past Sunday we celebrated Havi's 3rd birthday.  And I did manage to capture a few photos of the birthday girl and her mini cake.  We had planned on going camping this year for Thanksgiving, but unfortunately our friends going with us had to cancel at the last minute.  So we decided to stay home.  Patrick will be deep frying our turkey, and I will be whipping up some tasty dishes to accompany it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Gobble!  Gobble!